Comparing Broad-Phase Interaction Detection Algorithm for Multiphysics DEM Applications

Extended Discrete Element Method (XDEM) is a multiphysics approach that extends the classic Discrete Element Method (DEM) by attaching chemical and thermodynamical state to the particles. One of the essential and most computation-intensive part of XDEM is the interaction/collision detection phase during which objects in-contact or in close-range are identified. In this work, we evaluate and compare 10 different Broad-Phase Collision Detection algorithms while considering a large DEM test-case. It appears that the choice of the best algorithm is a trade-off between many criteria including the size of the search space, the number of particles and the memory usage.